John Herrman

AP worked with Microsoft on a rich news reading experience to serve as a launching point for AP Mobile on Windows Phone 7 Series this year. A panoramic user experience incorporates news, social networks and photos as a way for people to select the newsmakers that interest them.

"Battle Punks" is a proof of concept based on a game in private beta on Facebook. It demos a social experience that will be possible on Windows Phone 7 Series. It has 3-D customizable characters and social turn-based gameplay, and was developed by Gravity Bear and Mythos Labs.

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With simple finger flicks, people can create photo effects like this using the Windows Phone 7 Series Colorizer application. They can then upload the new image with one click to photo-sharing sites such as Windows Live and Facebook.

. Using the Deep Zoom capability in Silverlight, Graphic.ly offers an immersive comic book reading experience on Windows Phone 7 Series that incorporates social interaction, with access to the subtleties of artwork and inking. Graphic.ly is a Microsoft BizSpark One startup partner.

. Microsoft demonstrated an application that highlighted the location and mapping capabilities of Windows Phone 7 Series using the Foursquare Labs social network game service.

Microsoft originally created "Goo Splat" for Zune HD with XNA Game Studio and ported it to Windows Phone 7 Series in under an hour. "Goo Splat" is a casual game that challenges the player to keep the goo from falling to the bottom and prevent the screen from filling up.

." Microsoft's game heritage is on full 3-D display in "The Harvest," a proof-of-concept game that shows Xbox LIVE Achievements, destructible terrain and a 3-D interactive environment. It was developed by Luma Arcade using XNA Game Studio 4.0 in about three weeks of development time.

. With graphics that evoke an old diary with password-protected lock and key, Hush Hush uses Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 Series to enable mixed-media diaries of text, audio, photos and video. Entries appear in a timeline view that pulls in Wikipedia "this day in history" facts and images.

Major League Soccer's application for Windows Phone 7 Series lets fans track their favorite teams in real time, with notifications of game events, game stats and the ability to watch highlight clips via Silverlight and Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming.

Marionette is a fun application built by Archetype International that demonstrates the Accelerometer and audio processing power of Windows Phone 7 Series. Here Microsoft executive Scott Guthrie appears as a talking puppet.

Microsoft partner Seesmic shows the cross-platform capabilities of Silverlight by demonstrating the Seesmic social networking platform on Windows Phone 7 Series, Mac and Nokia. Seesmic is a BizSpark One startup company.

No official description for this one, but what the hell—it's Shazam. It can tell yo what you're listening to.